Andy was a partisan. He cried whole-heartedly, "The pity for Vivien!" He could say, "The pity for Harry!" for old Harry's sake, and more for Vivien's. No, "The pity for Isobel!" was breathed in his heart. The case seemed to him a plain one there; and he was not of the party who would have the Recording Angel as liberal with tears as with ink, sedulously obliterating everything that he punctiliously wrote--in the end, on that view, a somewhat ineffectual registrar, who might be spared both ink and tears, and provided with a retiring pension by triumphant believers in Necessity. It may come to that. "I think Harry may be wanting me." She rose in her slim grace, and held out a hand to him--not in formal farewell, but in an impulse of good-will. She had come into her heritage of womanhood, and bore it with a shy stateliness. "Thank you"--a pause rather merry than timid--"Thank you, policeman Andy." "No, but I thank you--and you seem to me rather like the queen of the fairies." She smiled, and sighed lightly. "If I can make the king think so always!" Then she was gone, a white shadow gliding over the grass--a woman now, still in a child's shape. She flitted past Isobel Vintry, kissing her hand, and so passed in to where "Harry wanted her." Politeness dictated that Andy, thus left to himself, should join his hostess; he did not know that she was asleep, quite sound asleep by now. Having sat down before he discovered this state of affairs, he found himself committed to a virtual _tête-à-tête_ with Isobel Vintry, quite the last thing he desired. He did not find it easy to open the conversation. "Oh, we can talk! We shan't disturb her," Miss Vintry hastened to assure him with a smile. "You've been quite a stranger at Nutley. Did you find the atmosphere too romantic? Too much love-making for your taste?" "I did feel rather in the way now and then." "Perhaps you were once or twice! When you attached yourself to Vivien after dinner, and left Mr. Harry no resource but poor me!" Surely if she spoke like that--actually recalling the critical occasion--she could have no suspicion? Either she must never have noticed the shawl at all, or feel sure that it had been removed before her talk with Harry reached the point of danger. "I'm sure you entertained him very well. I don't think he'd complain." "Well, sometimes people like talking over their affairs with a third person for a change--as I daresay Vivien has been doing with you just now! And, after all, because you're engaged, everybody else in the world needn't at once seem hopelessly stupid." Certainly Isobel Vintry could never seem hopelessly stupid, thought Andy. Rather she was superbly plausible. "And perhaps even Mr. Harry may like a rest from devotion--or will you be polite enough to suggest that a temporary change in its object is a better way of putting it?"